The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 92

When she was around Clarissa, she remained the gentle, polite, and slightly deferential woman she had always been.

When she was with Hackett, she was still that quiet, subservient shadow of a wife.

Every single person inside the Lehman Estate believed that the world was spinning exactly as they had designed it.

Annelise, who had once fought so viciously against the divorce, seemed to have completely surrendered to her fate.

Only Harriet knew that this was nothing but the suffocating, deadly silence right before the hurricane made landfall.

The night before the wedding.

Hackett returned to the estate utterly exhausted, having just finished a grueling ten-hour surgery.

He didn't go to his study, nor did he head downstairs for dinner. He walked straight up to the second-floor master bedroom he shared with Annelise.

Pushing the door open, he found the room entirely unlit.

He saw Annelise standing alone out on the balcony, holding a small watering can, quietly tending to the potted orchids lining the ledge.

The cold moonlight spilled through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, casting a soft, ethereal glow over her cream-colored loungewear.

Her face was entirely devoid of expression, as terrifyingly still as a beautiful, lifeless sculpture.

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, as Hackett stared at her slender silhouette, a massive, unnameable dread suddenly clawed at his chest.

It felt as though the woman standing right in front of him might simply melt into the moonlight and vanish into thin air at any given second.

His Adam's apple bobbed. Keeping his footsteps incredibly light, he slowly walked over to her.

Reaching out from behind, he gently wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back against his chest.

He rested his chin on her fragile shoulder. The familiar, faint scent of gardenia drifted from her skin.

Annelise's hand paused on the watering can.

She didn't turn around. She didn't struggle.

"Annelise."

Hackett's voice carried a raw, exhaustion-laced hoarseness that even he didn't recognize.

"After the wedding is over... let's sit down and really talk, okay?"

He truly believed they could still talk.

He truly believed there was still time to salvage this.

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